Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Monkey see Monkey do

Tomorrow I'm going to Tomah to meet with one of the best model airplane builders in Wisconsin. I met him last year at our club's annual Fun Fly and was impressed by the quality of his work. He built a model for a friend of mine and the quality was excellent and the price affordable.

Anyway he called today telling me to get my name on the waiting list and order a "Short Kit" of whatever it was that I wanted him to build. I told him I wanted a "Drone" and his reply was that nobody had ever asked him to build one before. To make a long story short we will be meeting to discuss the project I have in mind.

What project is that Percy, you might be wondering? Thought you'd never ask.

One important characteristic about a camera carrying, First Person View(FPV), model airplane is that the view from the front not be obstructed by a spinning propeller. Since most model airplanes have the propeller in the nose a serious FPV'er will choose a design that has the propeller located somewhere else.

One option is to use a twin engined model, which gets the props off to the sides. They are still in the front but on the wings rather than the nose. If you are familiar with WW2 airplanes, the P-38 Lightning is a good example, however there are others like the Mosquito and B-25 Mitchell.

The Drone I'm going to ask my friend to build looks a lot like the P-38. It will have two electric motors on the wings and behind them two booms extending to the rear of the aircraft. On the ends of the booms a V-Tail design connects them.

One thing about a V-Tail design is that the elevator and rudder are integrated. In the more common design of an airplane the tail houses the rudder and beneath it, the horizontal Stabilizer holds the elevator. These two work independently of each other. In a V-Tail the two are integrated. When the pilot wants to climb both control surfaces in the "V" tilt upwards performing the elevating function. When the pilot wants to bank right or left the two surfaces tilt in opposite directions. So which tilt does what you might ask? I can only respond that the answer is still not self evident to me. I know the answer but it is not intuitive. For example on a regular airplane when the elevator tilts up it is self evident that the airplane will climb. When tilted down the airplane dives. Conversely when the rudder goes left the model goes left while the opposite holds true for turning right. I can see the wind hitting the surfaces and intuitively understand what happens when they do.

On a V-Tail both control surfaces tilting up obviously will make the aircraft rise. No mystery there, however, when they tilt in opposite directions which way will the plane bank? Again I know the answer but it isn't intuitive. When the right wing aileron goes up and the left goes down the aircraft banks right. The same is true on a V-Tail. When the right control surface on the "V" goes up and the left goes down the same aileron principle holds true. The airplane banks right. So, I know the answer, in a monkey see monkey do sense, but why it works that way never really sunk in. I've heard it explained a hundred times but it still doesn't intuit. There are some things that my brain refuses to process and when that happens I just have to forego a deeper understanding and accept the school solution.